posted 09-06-2012 02:20 PM                       

quote: Joe Redifer

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I like how "b***** off" is censored. I assume they mean bugger off. As if bugger is a cuss word. But then again, people overseas get really upset when I call them spastics when I simply mean "hyper".

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posted 09-08-2012 12:32 AM                       

quote: The Daily Telegraph

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Abusive expat murderer causing deportation havoc in Australia

Australia may have to charter a plane at a cost of up to A$1 million (£650,000) to fly a British murderer, Keith David Herring, to London.

The murderer spat on passengers, ripped a telephone from the seat of a plane and tried to urinate in the aisle during two attempts to fly him on commercial airlines.

Herring, 66, who is notorious for his extraordinary displays of anger and abuse, is due to be deported after spending two decades in jail for murdering his wife in 1989.

Despite a long criminal history in Britain – reportedly involving 70 offences including assault, grievous bodily harm, dishonesty, and biting off the ear of a prison guard – Herring was granted a visa in Australia in 1988, a year before he murdered his Philippines-born wife, Juiletta Herring, a nurse whom he married in England in 1986.

He had concealed his criminal record, which was not picked up by Australian authorities.

During his trial, Herring reportedly exposed himself, abused the prosecutor – calling him a "fat slug" – and leapt from the dock in an attempt to strangle the judge, whom he called a "silly old devil".

He was convicted in 1995 and received a 22-year sentence, as well as a 2-and-a-half year sentence for contempt of court.

Australian authorities have been seeking to deport Herring since his release from prison in June. However, two attempts to fly him home from Sydney airport failed this week.

On Wednesday, he was removed from a Qantas plane by three security guards and an immigration authority after abusing crew and vandalising the plane.

The following day, he was removed from a Thai Airways plane after similar behaviour.

"He misbehaved in a range of ways and a decision was made by the department in consultation with the airline that we didn't want to risk any incidents with passengers and crew, so we took him off," an immigration official said.

Authorities are seeking the "most cost-effective" way to transport him but have already wasted the cost of ten airfares for Herring and officials. The immigration department may have to charter a plane and is also considering booking a row or rows of seats.

Herring is currently being held in an immigration detention centre in Sydney.

He was found guilty in 1991 of drowning his 38-year-old wife after claiming he found her body floating in their backyard swimming pool after he returned from a date with his lover.

Herring's wild courtroom antics – which followed an incident in the committal hearing when he undid his fly and exposed himself – were described by the trial judge as the worst he had ever seen.

"Mrs Herring's death was planned and premeditated," the court found. "It was carried out in a cold-blooded manner. Since then, (Herring) has sought to cover his foul deed by lies, feigned grief and every device and scheme which his fertile mind could conjure up."

During a recent phone interview, Herring admitted for the first time that he committed the murder.

"I caused a death. I paid my time," Herring told Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

"The rooms are dirty, the areas we live in are dirty. I have heart conditions. I am waiting for an operation."

Immigration officials said Herring's stubbornness had delayed his deportation but would not prevent it.

"The department is continuing to examine options for the removal of this client at the earliest opportunity and in the most cost-effective way," a spokesman said. "Misbehaviour in no way deters the department."

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posted 09-15-2012 03:06 PM                       

Sushi shop sign too offensive for neighbourhood
By QMI Agency



The sushi bar menus will wear soon be changed to something more "appropriate". (Chantal Poirier/QMI Agency)

quote:

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MONTREAL - A Quebec Superior Court flipped the bird to sushi restaurant Fukyu.

The name "Fukyu" might be a Japanese word for a form of martial arts, but a judge ruled in August that it was "clearly inappropriate" in the Montreal context.

Sushi bar owner John De Melo, 28, told QMI Agency he wanted to name his Montreal resto something "catchy and Japanese. We didn't think it would be inappropriate."

So the sign outside his restaurant read "Fukyu" since last February. By July, De Melo's landlord began receiving complaints from other tenants.

The landlord, L.G. Plaza, filed a lawsuit claiming De Melo was obliged to get consent before erecting the sign that the landlord claimed was provocative.

Judge Kirkland Casgrain agreed and ordered De Melo to hide the offensive words within 24 hours of the court ruling, which was released at the end of August.


De Melo said he didn't think the ruling would have negative impact on his business.

"I think the financial impacts on my company will be positive," he said, adding that the case has given his sushi bar increased exposure to the public.

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posted 09-17-2012 12:56 PM                       

quote: The Independent

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Investigation uncovers rat meat being sold at East London market

Rats are being sold to the public alongside other forms of illegal and possibly contaminated forms of meat by a popular food market.

Grasscutter rats imported from Ghana were sold to undercover reporters by six butchers and shops on Ridley Road market in the Dalston area of Hackney, east London, together with blow-torched goat and sheep meat known as "smokies".

After seeing footage of the meat, filmed by the BBC, environmental health expert Paul Povey said: "It's all illegal and hasn't undergone health control, hasn't been inspected and may well be contaminated.

"You've got to wonder about the contamination level of this meat that anyone's bringing into their kitchens."

Cane rats are regarded as such a delicacy in Ghana that some farmers now rear them in cages. Smokies, which involve an unskinned sheep carcus being flame-cooked without the spine being removed, are banned in the EU on the grounds of public health and animal welfare, have also been linked to gang crime.

Hackney Council said that it regularly carried out inspections, adding that its officers "will look into this and take the appropriate action". There is no suggestion that the practice is more widespread on the market. The two stores that were filmed selling rat meat later denied doing so.

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posted 09-18-2012 06:04 AM                    

quote: Leo Enticknap

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Why the hell they messed around importing them from Ghana when there is a plentiful supply in the nearest drain or tube tunnel...

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posted 09-19-2012 11:51 PM                       

quote:

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Travel can be expensive. One man is using a unique way to pay for a trip as a challenge. Pennsylvania comedian Josh Sankey is on a mission to make a cross-country road trip from New York to Los Angeles with no other currency but bacon.

Sankey isn't carrying any cash or credit cards as he makes his cross country trip. He is paying for everything from gas to lodging by using uncooked bacon as currency. He set off on his trip with 3,000 pounds of the popular meat and he seems to be getting good deals with it so far.

"I got two tickets to the Jets game for six bricks [of bacon]," Sankey told ABC. "They were pretty good seats, too."

Sankey's trip is part of a promotion for bacon producer Oscar Mayer. He is being followed by a film crew as they document Sankey's bacon barter.

Sankey, of New Castle, kicked off his trip in New York on Sept. 9. He has until Sept. 23 to make it to Los Angeles as he barters the bacon that he's towing in a trailer.

Sankey has made some interesting trades so far along his journey. He was able to get a taxi ride in NYC, Jets tickets, lodging at stranger's houses who he met through Twitter, homemade moonshine and wine, jumper cables, gas money and more. Sankey was even able to hire 29 college interns for 100 pounds of bacon in Lafayette, Ind. However the strangest trade was paying a fan with 200 bricks of bacon to get a bacon tattoo, which cost another 200 bricks of bacon.

Now Sankey is hoping to make even more impressive trades.

"Now I just really want to up the ante," he told ABC. "I mean, a guy got a permanent tattoo of bacon in exchange for bacon. How do you top that?"

Sankey is aiming for a stay in a penthouse with a hot tub or a helicopter ride. With the help of his 3,200 Twitter followers and the 735K Facebook followers on the Oscar Meyer page, Sankey's goals may be plausible as fans are willing to help him in just about any way.

So far, he has traveled to New York City, East Rutherford, N.J., Hagerstown, Md., Charleston, W.Va., Lesage, W.Va., Louisville, Ky., and Chicago, IL.

Fans can help Sankey arrange bacon barters by visiting the website BaconBarter.com or through Facebook and Twitter.

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posted 09-22-2012 05:36 PM                       

quote:

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City authorities in Zimbabwe's second largest city are appealing to home owners to flush their toilets at a specified time as a way to unblock sewers after days of severe water rationing.

Bulawayo City Council has asked its more than 1 million residents to flush their toilets simultaneously at 7:30 p.m. local time Saturday when water supplies are restored.

City officials say "synchronized flushing" is needed to clear waste that would have accumulated in sanitary facilities which will have been affected by days of water outages.

Bulawayo's two main supply dams have been drying up due to drought conditions prevailing in the arid, southwestern part of Zimbabwe raising fears of worsening water shortages before the rainy season starts in November.

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posted 10-02-2012 11:26 PM                       

quote:

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by Lauren O'Neil Posted: October 2, 2012 7:40 PM Last Updated: October 2, 2012 7:40 PM

A newly-released study shows that that looking at photos of very young animals might actually boost a person's concentration and productivity at work. (iStock) Office workers take note: you no longer need to minimize that live-streaming kitten cam on your desktop whenever the boss walks by.

If anything, you should show it off proudly. According to Japanese researchers, you're not slacking off by looking at adorable imagery - you're simply improving your performance.

"The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus" is the name of a study published last week in the open access journal PloS ONE.

Conducted at Japan's Hiroshima University in 2009, the results of the study published this week show that looking at photos of very young animals might actually boost a person's concentration and productivity at work due to "the cuteness-triggered positive emotion that is associated with approach motivation and the tendency toward systematic processing."

Researchers performed a series of three experiments with 102 subjects split into smaller groups.

In the first experiment, the subjects were asked to play the Japanese version of "Operation," then look at a series of photos and then perform the tasks again.

One group looked at photos young puppies and kittens, while another group looked at photos of grown cats and dogs.

Those who looked at photos of cute baby animals before attempting these tests ended up with a performance score 44 per cent higher on average than the group who had looked at adult animals.

The experiment was performed two more times, with subjects trying other skill-testing tasks. A control group was also added that looked at images of delicious food. The results of the first experiment were duplicated- those who looked at the cute pictures did much better than those who looked at adult animals, while looking at food images affected a subject's performance very little.

"Results show that participants performed tasks requiring focused attention more carefully after viewing cute images," the article states. "For future applications, cute objects may be used as an emotion elicitor to induce careful behavioral tendencies in specific situations, such as driving and office work."

Live Science points out the appropriateness of such a study taking place in Japan, known around the world as a capital of all things cute.

"Perhaps unsurprisingly this new study comes from researchers in Japan, where kawaii (Japanese for "cute") reigns. From the characters of 'Hello Kitty' and 'Pokémon's' Pikachu, cute creatures stir positive feelings, researchers say, because they resemble babies with their big eyes and large heads."

Indeed, a "baby schema" was how researchers at Hiroshima University qualified how cute an animal was.

"This is a set of features that are commonly seen in young animals: a large head relative to the body size, a high and protruding forehead, large eyes, and so forth," reads the paper. "In humans, the stimuli are deemed cute, capture attention, bring a smile to the viewer's face, and induce motivation and behavior for approach and caregiving."

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posted 10-05-2012 12:16 PM                       

quote:

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A German liquor manufacturer has released a special edition line of rum, vodka and whisky, which it guarantees to have been poured over a sexy model's bare breasts before it's bottled.

Not convinced? G Spirits said every bottle comes with the model's signature on a certificate of authenticity and a photo of the bombshell.

"To create the perfect taste we let every single drop of our spirits run over the breasts of a special type of woman," the G Spirits website says.

The creators said the unique idea was influenced by another vodka that's filtered through diamonds.

"After storing it in (a) bourbon cask for 10 years and 1 year in barrels of French oak, it was poured over Amina's breasts, which lends it a unique erotic character," the website says of its whisky-making process.

The booze-maker said it adheres to health and safety regulations, and medical personnel are present.


Images of half-naked models pouring booze on their breasts are pictured on its website, including model Alexa Varga, Hungary's 2012 Playmate of the Year.

The booze isn't available in Canada.

Bottles of G-Spirits sell on its website for around $160.

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